44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 14, 2022 11:00AM
- Nov/14/22 12:03:55 p.m.
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He said: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to get an opportunity to speak to this motion. I want to start at the outset by thanking my colleagues, the hon. House leaders, for the areas in which we have been able to find co-operation. There have been a number of different areas in which we have been able to work constructively together. The intention of this motion is to be an expansion and not a reduction of that.
I am going to speak very briefly to some of my concerns with respect to the legislative agenda we have and some of the challenges that currently exist with that, and then I am going to speak more broadly to the state of discourse and our engagement with one another in this place politically.
It is my hope that this will provoke more dialogue among the parties to make clear what exactly our respective intentions are in terms of the number of speakers and length of time taken with each bill. It has been a source of frustration to not know how many speakers are going to be put up, specifically by the Conservatives, and that is, frankly, obstruction by stealth. I will give specific examples.
Bill S-5, which this House voted for unanimously, took six days of House time just to get to committee. This is something that was voted on unanimously. More specifically, let us take a look at Bill C-9, which is a very technical bill on judges. That bill, again, was supported unanimously. However, when there were interpretation issues in the House and we asked for an additional 20 minutes so we did not need to spend an entire additional House day dealing with this bill, which was unanimously supported, that was rejected by the Conservatives.
Although most times we have not been told how many speakers there will be, we have been told that the Conservatives want more speakers on this bill. This motion would provide the opportunity to do that. I have heard the hon. House leader for the Conservative Party indicate concern with committees. I share those concerns and want to work with him to make sure committees are in no way impeded and may conduct their business without interruption, so both committees and the House can do their respective work.
I have just a couple of comments, though, because this is an inflection point and we have a choice as to the direction we take right now. If there is upset about sitting later hours, there are solutions. Simply give us the number of speakers and have a frank and honest conversation about how long is reasonable for a bill to take. Let us have that conversation understanding no one party here has a majority, which means no one party should be able to dictate to all the other parties that something does not move forward.
It is totally fair to oppose something. It is totally fair to vote against it. It is totally fair to disagree with it vociferously. However, if a majority of the House wants to move forward, then the fair question is how many voices need to be heard from those who are not in the majority to allow the House to do its business. Giving no answer is not an acceptable response and is not something that can be worked with. Most reasonable people would see that.
This is really a call or a provocation for a conversation. In that conversation, I want to invoke a dear friend, who was the deputy leader of the government in this place. His name was Arnold Chan. I go back to the speech Arnold gave as he was mustering the last of his energy in his last days of life to speak to this chamber about how we need to work with one another.
Arnold was one of my best friends in the world, and watching him die was profoundly painful, but his words always echo in my ears. One of Arnold's chief frustrations was that this chamber, this place that was so important to him, was often reduced to just reading talking points with one another: us saying how wonderful we are and the other side saying how terrible we are, and them saying they are wonderful and us saying they are terrible. Of course, in that back-and-forth, the truth of the situation and the difficulty of what we are going through is lost. In difficult times, we lose the opportunity to genuinely hear each other.
Let us be straight about where we are. These are the most difficult times the planet has faced since World War II. People across the world are scared. They are watching the price of their basic necessities of life rising, be they groceries, rent or any of a myriad things. They are watching a war in Ukraine. They are watching horrors in Iran. They are seeing climate change ravage their communities, and they are hungry for answers.
The truth is that in really hard times, often we do not know all the answers. In fact, if any one of us was to stand in this House and say we know what the world is going to be in six months, we would be lying. We live in incredibly turbulent times, and I am looking forward to hearing the hon. House leader's speech soon. We live in a time where we have to be straight with each other about what those hard things are and what the solutions are.
I really love New Orleans. I had the opportunity to go down there, and sometimes it is easier in another country to reflect on the state of their politics than it is on our own, but when I had an opportunity to talk to a young Black lady in a store about the state of being Black in America, how unjust it was and how hopeless she felt, she did not think that anybody was really speaking truthfully about the situation she and her community were facing.
That makes me think of the people we represent on both sides of the aisle, who are suffering in so many different ways that we do not always have the answer to, whether it is somebody who walks into our office who is finding they cannot afford to pay rent or somebody who walks into our office who is facing the horror of some unimaginable terror that is happening in another part of the world. When we look at them and try to give them compassion and answers, too often we all, and I will own this, have been prone to exaggeration and to having more solutions than we actually have. However, what we do in that exaggeration, on both sides, is that we allow them to think we do not really see the picture for what it is.
I will give a very specific example. On that same trip, when I walked into Studio Be, an art gallery of Black artists who are talking about the experience of being Black and the terrors they face, it was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me. It is not my country, and a lot of the horrors that were being written about are not happening to our citizens, but the injustice that has been visited upon Black people in our own country is very hard to look at and very hard to respond to. That place, though, met all of that injustice with such love, compassion, truth and forgiveness that it calls on all of us to do the same. We can yell at each other. We can deride each other, but there are old lessons that are being forgotten in that.
We look at old wisdom from something like The Lord's Prayer, something we have said so many times. It says, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Let us think about that as a covenant, that we cannot move forward unless we can truly understand the suffering of somebody else and understand their position.
I think, and I maybe I am Pollyanna to believe it, that we have to have more compassion for one another. I think that compassion, empathy and forgiveness are not weaknesses, but the bedrock foundation of civilization and the only things that have ever held us together. I think that in the darkest hours, and let us not lie to each other, we are in dark hours as our hospitals fill up with children, as we worry about whether key surgeries can move forward, and as we worry about the state of our planet, we need that compassion and empathy for one another, and we need the realness in our dialogue. Why do we need that realness? It is because, when we live in an environment of “gotcha” and playing games, we distort the truth.
That same woman I talked to in a shop, who was talking about the horrible conditions that she felt existed for her community, told me the world was run by 12 people. She is a deeply intelligent woman, but she believed in conspiracies because people did not speak what was true and because they attempted to take an opportunity to play games with it.
I look at the hon. House leader for the Conservatives, who is laughing right now, and I say to him—
Hon. Andrew Scheer: Who is saying this?
Hon. Mark Holland: Madam Speaker, exactly. I proclaim that I have been a hypocrite. When I was in opposition, the tone that I used and the way that I asked questions could have been different. I think I often asked the right questions in the wrong way. I do not have a problem acknowledging that the tenor and tone with which I approached issues needed to change. I have tried to address that, and I will continue to.
All I am saying is that when we fight over the small things, the big things get hidden. Each of us knows that when we see and hear truth and when we distort it, exaggerate it and continue to play that game, it makes it feel to others that we do not see truth. It is not enough for us to see truth in private rooms. It is not enough for us to see truth in corridors. We have to speak it in a chamber like this.
The question that we have to ask now is not what comma will come after our names, because in 100 years' time no one will read that Wikipedia entry. All of us, I dare say, will be forgotten, me included. However, it is up to us to meet the challenge of the time that we are in, and I think we have a lot to learn from each other. I am here today to say that the challenges that our country faces cannot be faced unless we listen to one another. I approach this in the same way.
Let me go back to Remembrance Day. A long-time friend shared a story with me that I had never heard before from the Battle of the Somme. He talked about his grandfather. His grandfather saved not one, not two, not three but four Canadian soldiers, and as he was dragging the fourth soldier back, he was shot and killed. We have to ask this question: How many people would he have saved had his life not been taken? I think it is worth asking, for all of us, what was in his heart as he charged into certain danger.
What was in his heart as he charged into certain danger was hope for a better world, gratitude for what he had and love for his fellow man. I do not think it is too much to ask of all of us, regardless of our differences, to approach this in the same way. When we approach the issues of our time with grievance and anger, it never works. We could do it, and we could talk about freedom. There is absolutely a freedom to being full of grievance, bitterness, anger and a feeling that we are not getting what we want and what we deserve, and we have a right to do that, but this has led to very dark places.
I would submit that true freedom, actual freedom, is the ability to speak truth but also hear truth and be truly as we are. Evil does not hide in self-expression. Evil hides in the denial of truth. We are facing forces that would rip apart our democracies, and that is no exaggeration. If we are serious about saving liberal democracy, then I think it is time we return to the principles of the enlightened. In the enlightenment, the key and most powerful insight was the acknowledgement of what we do not know and the courage to use science and data to find out what is true.
In this chamber, if we can come to know the problems of our day, meaning the enormous difficulties we have, while being honest about the challenges that are in front of us and being truthful about what the solutions might be, then we can be worthy of the incredible honour we have of being in this chamber. I would submit that the only way forward in this time is for us to figure that out. If we cannot figure it out in this chamber and build a bridge to one another with our differences here in the chamber, then how can we expect the country to heal? How can we expect our neighbours to find that bridge?
I will end on this note. As we think of Remembrance Day and we think of battles fought against the Nazis and other evil regimes, the battle that we fight today is not across a trench or an ocean. It is not through barbed wire. It is in our own hearts.
I had a conversation with a wonderful fellow, and it did not have anything to do with politics. I met him out in Kitchener. He runs a grocery store called Dutchie's. His name is Mike and he has courage. He said it used to be that when we saw something as ridiculous as a seven-dollar head of lettuce, a person would create a new business and could make a huge profit selling it at five dollars or four dollars. He said that people are tired and they have gone through so much. They do not want to take a chance or take a risk. They are afraid to hope.
Humanity has gone through much darker hours. When we look at what happened in World War I when people were dealing with the Spanish flu, they longed to go back to the Victorian age, to the time of corsets and dinner parties. However, they could not have imagined the prosperity that lay before them in the 1920s.
In the 1920s, when they were celebrating, they were rocked by the Great Depression, and then a world war and great darkness. They longed to go back to the 1920s, to a period of flapper girls and prohibition parties. Of course, they could not have imagined the prosperity that was about to greet them in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is true, again, that with a period of great inflation and energy shortages at the end of the 1970s and leading into the early 1980s, people wanted to go back to the glory of the 1950s and 1960s. We always talk about going back, but we forget that if we do hard things and we continue to move forward, there lies a prosperity that we cannot imagine.
That prosperity, I think, is going to be rooted in very different motivations than what we have seen before. Yes, people will still want to put food on the table. Yes, people will still want a roof over their heads. Yes, people will still want nice things. However, they want purpose. They want to wake up in the morning and believe that they are part of something bigger than just their lives.
I think our goal, not just as a government but as a Parliament, is to dream with them, to hear their dreams and to listen to somebody like Mike, who is imagining a different future, trying to change the way the grocery industry works, trying to upend convention and taking chances and risks. For each of us, regardless of our political party, it is about saying he has it right. Taking a bet on our universe, taking a bet on good and taking a bet on the moral arc of history is what we should all be doing. We should not be stoking fear or amplifying grievances, but lifting up every person we see trying in these hard times.
What does that have to do with extending hours? It has to do with what kind of debate we have in the chamber. It has to do with what kind of conversation we have with each other about the times we are in. Yes, we can be cynical. Yes, we can call each other names. Yes, we can write each other off. However, if we cannot figure it out, who is supposed to?
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- Nov/14/22 12:25:54 p.m.
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The member will have time to make a speech. I would like to give the House leader an opportunity to comment.
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- Nov/14/22 12:27:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am somewhat surprised by the turn today's debate has taken. I note that the government House leader gave a spiritual and somewhat philosophical speech about how he sees things. I see signs of his personal growth. I heard him quote the Bible. I realize that it may be pleasant to hear ourselves talk and share ideas, but we must not forget what today's debate is about.
We are debating a motion that essentially muzzles the opposition. I want to speak about truth, but who holds the truth? I do not claim to know the truth or to believe that my colleagues' notion of the truth is better or worse than mine. I am seeking a guarantee for the exercise of democracy, and democracy is exercised in debates between a government and a very strong opposition, which makes it possible for the government to excel and be even better.
I missed the first two minutes of my colleague's speech, but I would like to hear him explain why we need today's Motion No. 22, under Government Business, to extend sitting hours. I want to talk about the facts. The facts are that 36 bills have been introduced, 19 bills, or 52%, have passed all stages of the House; three are at the Senate, 16 have received royal assent, seven are in committee and 10 are at second reading. Personally, I think that it pretty good. I do not understand this obsession with extending sitting hours and saying that we need this because Parliament is paralyzed, when in fact the opposite is true.
I would like the government to explain to me, with supporting evidence, why we are debating this motion today.
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- Nov/14/22 12:51:22 p.m.
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No, there is no time limit on this speech.
The hon. opposition House leader.
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- Nov/14/22 1:18:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague has made a very important point that I did not make in my speech, so I welcome the opportunity to make it right now.
Part of the motion is wording that would prevent the House from asking the Speaker to see if there is quorum. Now, quorum is a fancy Latin word that basically asks if there are enough MPs to have an official sitting of the House. The Liberals specifically wrote into the motion that they do not have to keep quorum, which means they would not have to be here late in the night to work.
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- Nov/14/22 1:44:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I deeply appreciate the speech that my colleague gave today, especially the part about committees and her concern for veterans affairs. I share that concern given the fact that we have had two meetings cancelled at a time when we want the minister and the deputy minister to return to give a clearer understanding of their testimony versus what came forward from our veterans. It is very disconcerting that this is happening.
I would like the member to speak momentarily about the fact that, as I am hearing, the Liberals are upset that we on this side of the House want to speak. They are now giving us more time to speak, but they are removing themselves from that equation with the opportunity to not have to meet quorum. How does she feel about that?
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- Nov/14/22 3:19:29 p.m.
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I will answer that and then I will come back.
I want to remind hon. members of the prerogative of the Speaker. Once Speakers have heard enough that they figure they can rule on it or make a decision then they can cut it off. Sometimes it does get into debate and is more about getting a message across.
With respect to unanimous consent motions, we have already ruled on that and have asked members to ensure they have everything covered before bringing them forward. We have seen that abused in the past. I am not saying the hon. member for North Island—Powell River was abusing it; I am just saying that it has been abused in the past, which has ruined it for the people who are putting them forward now.
If members want to make a speech, I would ask them to wait until they have time during the session when we have speeches or even during question period. However, unanimous consent motions were used poorly in the past, so I want to remind hon. members why we do not allow them to go on and on. Sometimes they have been used more as a method to clandestinely get their message across. That is what we are trying to avoid, because it eats up time and we cannot get the business of Parliament completed. That is the reason why and that is why I encourage everyone to talk among themselves if they have a unanimous consent motion.
Every Tuesday the House leaders come together. I encourage them to talk tomorrow and maybe give some instruction to the Speaker with respect to how they would like that handled. I would appreciate the guidance of all the House leaders.
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Madam Speaker, we could swear just by the member's comments in his speech across the way that everything was just great, but it is not.
An hon. member: It is.
Mr. Bob Zimmer: Madam Speaker, he just said that it is. He heckled me and said it is. I have an article by Kelly Hayes entitled, “Northerners are hitting the cost of living breaking point”. We are seeing a skyrocketing amount of people who have to use food banks in the territories.
If everything is just good, what does the member have to say to northerners, when clearly it is not great for them?
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- Nov/14/22 6:53:46 p.m.
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I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. He has only four minutes for his speech. He will then have another minute to get an answer.
The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and to the Minister of Sport.
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- Nov/14/22 7:00:28 p.m.
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I have to interrupt the member.
I just want to take a moment to remind members that, when they are speaking, they have to give the interpreters a chance to convey the message so everyone can understand. People are trying to pack more words into limited time, but I want to remind members that, when they are giving a speech, they have to make sure they give the interpreters at least a little flexibility so they can do their job.
The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
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